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Letters from Stevenson (including 106 of his letters to Mrs Sitwell, also letters to Henley; letters to Blackwoods); letters to and from Baxter, Henley and others relating to the quarrel with Henley; S’s ‘Notebook T’; materials collected by Graham Balfour when preparing the first biography; juvenilia and essays; Stevenson’s copies (then presented to his parents) of Virginibus Puerisque and Underwoods with notes (65 in all) on where he wrote each essay and poem; the copper plate of the Treasure Island map prepared for the Edinburgh Edition (1895); photographs (Gorrie collection). Also papers of the Stevenson family (not listed here).

Literary Manuscripts:

Acc. 10356: ‘The History of Moses’ (signed ‘R. L. B. Stevenzon’, composed at the age of 6, dictated to his mother, signed, with childish drawings, incl. watercolour picture of ‘Moses writing the 5 tables’ – sitting at a table looking towards God, just appearing over a tall altar – on cut-up mourning paper); same item also incl. early photo of ‘Cummy and RLS’ and prize ‘Happy Sunday Book of Printed pictures’; also copy of privately printed edition of the MS by A. Edward Newton (1919), and a note by Newton on his acquisition of the MS.

Acc.4534/153: ‘Intermittent Lights’ (Records of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, 1871)

Acc. 9690: ‘Students Meeting and Class Excursion’ (3 pp; account of an end-of-year party of the Engineering students and a class excursion the following day (April 1871))

MS 9891 (bound in a large volume 9891-3 of collected documents) copies of letters by RLS and originals of letters to GB from Belle, from Baxter (about RLS’s difficult financial position in 1894), a letter from RAMS to Fanny, letter from Nellie Sanchez to Fanny

MS 9892 1. misc. notes (f.1), 2. misc. articles by S, incl. 4 galley slips of ‘Confessions of a Unionist’ (wtn. 1887) (see Swearingen p. 122); notes incl. transcription of ‘Definition of good literature’ (f. 12) – a one-page outline (‘Stevenson wrote a word or two under several headings of order, material, pattern, adornment of images and manner of treating a subject’, Swearingen p. 173). Below Stevenson’s notes Balfour wrote: ‘These holograph notes were written down probably in the autumn of 92, and were brought home by me among some waste paper in Sept ‘93’).

MS 9894 Correspondence 1884-1899; incl. letters answering Balfour’s questions about Stevenson in preparation for his biography); see also MS 9900. [Note: it may be here that we find “Fanny’s comments on fragments of Balfour’s typescript for the biography (Note: ‘There was never any attempt to suppress matter nor to modify statements. The abbreviations were practically all on points of style.’); also comments by LO.”

MS 9895 Correspondence 1900-11 (sometimes called ‘Balfour Biography Notebook’), incl. many letters from those who knew S; also letters 1900-15 relative to the quarrel between Mr and Mrs Lloyd Osbourne and the latter’s demand of restitution of letters from S, allegedly given to Mrs. K. Osbourne by Jane Whytt Balfour.

MS 9898, ‘Guardbook’: copies and extracts of S’s letters (mainly to his mother)

MS 9899, ‘Guardbook’: typescript of S papers transcribed while on loan from FVdGS

MS 9900, Notebook 1895: transcriptions of S’s poems and prose; many letters to Baxter (‘These fragments & letters were transcribed by me from the original M.S.S. brought home by me from San Francisco. Graham Balfour. Oct. 1895’)

MS 9901, Balfour Notebook 1896: transcripts of essays by S and letters written to him (‘Transcribed by me from the originals for my private satisfaction. The originals were sent in my care by Mrs Stevenson in Aug 1895 for Sidney Colvin’s use in writing the Life. There was a big long box full of papers heaped together, which I sorted and arranged for Colvin in the winter of 1895-6 at Bendarroch, Ottery St. Mary’). Includes transcript of the unpublished 15-page fragment ‘On the art of literature’ (MS Silverado).

MS 9903, ‘Notebook used in writing Life of R.L.S. in 1900-01 with many extracts from letters, M.S. etc.’, with alphabetic index at the front; short quotations and calendars of S’s movements and writings

MS 9904 See under Stevenson’s ‘Notebooks’ above

MS 9905 cuttings (1890 – ?) concerning Stevenson and his works;

MS 9906 cuttings (1886 – 1937) about people and places associated with Stevenson;

MS 9912, typescript of an unpublished play ‘The Dust of Defeat’ by Lloyd Osbourne

Balfour’s transcriptions of writings by Stevenson (MS 9897-9901) include the draft of an essay on ‘Boer Independence’, referred to as ‘Balfour papers’ (Box 1, ms. 140) in Colley’s RLS and the Colonial Imagination p. 142 (Swearingen locates the Ms in Yale) and Balfour’s transcription of the MS of ‘[Stevenson’s] Companion to the Cook Book’

The Balfour family:

GD69: Papers connected with the Balfours of Pilrig; comprises legal documents deposited by Mrs Balfour Gedded from the 18t Century to the late 19th, including the marriage contracts of Willie and Henrietta Traquair who ‘in a garden green with me were king and queen…..’.

GD126 is from the Balfour-Melvilles mostly concerning Strathkinness, their estate in Fife.

GD192 is a miscellaneous collection from a Balfour-Melville descendent a Col. Davey, with many letters relating to the relationships of Margaret Stevenson’s aunts etc., who were the elders who watched the children in the garden of RLS’s infancy

Other:

Their website also has a ‘Digital Library’ section devoted to Robert Louis Stevenson with photos, illustrations etc.